Discussion of Military, real or fictional

[mlooney 3,548]

7 hours ago, ijuin said:

The whole motivation for preventing Japan from having offensive military capability was to prevent them from doing what Germany had done in the 1930s and building a huge war machine for revenge. Now that all of the leaders from the war have died of old age, and the current leaders and public of Japan seem uninterested in having a massive war, those concerns are far less urgent than being able to defend if China decides to declare war.

There are still a large number of Japanese that don't want Japan to have a military that could defend vs PRC, saying that this is America's problem. 

[ijuin 587]

And the very fact that so many native Japanese are against having a stronger military is evidence that the risk of revenge-fueled aggression has mostly abated.

[mlooney 3,548]

12 hours ago, ijuin said:

risk of revenge-fueled aggression has mostly abated.

Yes, but PRC general expansionist tendency are on the rise.  They don't want to attack Japan because of WW2 any more, they want to take Japan's money.  Actually right now it's more the Philippines and Viet Nam that the PRC is pointing their not so metaphysical guns at.  Or more accurately water cannon.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

3 minutes ago, mlooney said:

Yes, but PRC general expansionist tendency are on the rise.  They don't want to attack Japan because of WW2 any more, . . .

Actually, that is still a thing among individuals; there have been some notable attacks against Japanese individuals in the PRC in recent years. The last one I recall is a 10 year old Japanese student was knifed and killed; the suspect is a 44 year old man.

[mlooney 3,548]

32 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Actually, that is still a thing among individuals; there have been some notable attacks against Japanese individuals in the PRC in recent years. The last one I recall is a 10 year old Japanese student was knifed and killed; the suspect is a 44 year old man.

Random attacks against "foreigners" is a thing in most of the world.  Unless he said something about revenge for WW2 atrocities, I wouldn't read too much into that.  Could be generational hatred of Japan, but I would bet against it.  No clue other than mental health issues as to why he would do that, but that's generally my view on random murder as it is.

[The Old Hack 2,482]

Only barely qualifying for this thread, but...

I was playing a game of Civilization 2 out of sheer nostalgia. Late in the game I suddenly discover that I still have a trireme from the early game sitting around in a harbour. I was about to disband it when I realized something odd. It had one more movement point than it was supposed to have. I couldn't understand why until I realized that I had developed nuclear power, which as one effect grants all ships an extra movement point.

Somehow the Navy had retrofitted this ancient and utterly obsolete oar-propelled vessel with a fusion power plant. I am utterly baffled. And I admit, also impressed.

[Don Edwards 558]

And I've seen a phalanx sink a battleship...

[Darth Fluffy 332]

7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I was playing a game of Civilization 2 out of sheer nostalgia.

I played the hell out of Civ 2 back in the day, and a lot of Civ 1 before 2 came out. Civ 3 introduced more need to maintain your own culture and such; I think it became a better game, more dimensions to manage. I played a bit of 3, some of the spin-offs, and a lot of Civ 5. You can get several of the series cheap when it's on sale on Steam; also base Civ 6 goes on sale for not so much, but I am skeptical that Civ 6 is better in any meaningful sense.

Civ 4 gets good reviews; I have it (Steam bundle) but have never played it.

[mlooney 3,548]

My brother is spending a lot of time playing Civ 6

[mlooney 3,548]

This is some what disturbing.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

17 hours ago, mlooney said:

My brother is spending a lot of time playing Civ 6

I'd be curious about his impression. Has he played previous versions? I'm guessing brother, so within your generation, been around a while, so yes.

The base game goes on sale, and a few of the DLCs. I get the impression that if you want something close to a full version of a previous edition, you will pay out the wazoo (an obscure biological reference). From what I gather, the main change is splashier cut scenes with 3-d graphics.

[mlooney 3,548]

He's been playing on and off pretty much from the start of the series.  He's said he likes this version, but other than adding some new victory conditions it plays like every other version. Of course he also says that all new version play like the older versions.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

34 minutes ago, mlooney said:

He's been playing on and off pretty much from the start of the series.  He's said he likes this version, but other than adding some new victory conditions it plays like every other version. Of course he also says that all new version play like the older versions.

They don't. They are still all the same base game, in some sense, but the differences are also pronounced. 5 is off in a direction 3 was trying to move, but it actually accomplishes the feat; 3 never felt completed.

As I said, I've never played 4, but it seems to have a claim on 'best version'.

As a wargamer, you'd be interested in the stacking rules vary greatly between versions.

I am through most of the achievements for 5, even the more obscure ones.

[mlooney 3,548]

I haven't played it since the 1st one. I think I played some "FreeCiv" back when I played games on Linux machines.

[ijuin 587]

Civ5 and later allow only one combat unit and one noncombat unit per tile, which ends the strategy of putting a high-melee-defense unit on a tile to protect your ranged units there. Instead, you have to engage in defense in depth, interposing your defenders between potential attackers and whatever you are protecting.

The biggest changes in Civ6 included:

Districts that you must build, taking up a map tile for the city, before you can build specialist buildings (e.g. an industrial district before you can build factories)

Civics/government is now a full tech tree of its own, earned with Culture points as compared to the research points for science.

Bonus/penalty for each new Age (Classical, Medieval, Industrial, etc.) based on your performance in the preceding Age.

[The Old Hack 2,482]

43 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Bonus/penalty for each new Age (Classical, Medieval, Industrial, etc.) based on your performance in the preceding Age.

So you get bonus points for going medieval on your opponents' asses?

[mlooney 3,548]

On 9/17/2024 at 9:19 PM, mlooney said:

Yeap.  Sgt Maj have to do something fairly major to get brig time before they get charged.   There are several things I see floating about as to why.  Sexual abuse of a trainee being the highest on the list, followed by drug ring.  And the ever popular child porn.

Found out what this was about. Spousal abuse. And his wife is also a high ranking enlisted Marine so they are paying some attention to it.

[mlooney 3,548]

It's not anti personal, at least not yet, it's for anti-drone use.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/01/army-has-sent-armed-robot-dog-middle-east-testing.html

[Darth Fluffy 332]

41 minutes ago, mlooney said:

It's not anti personal, at least not yet, it's for anti-drone use.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/01/army-has-sent-armed-robot-dog-middle-east-testing.html

The Terminators are being fielded.

[mlooney 3,548]

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

The Terminators are being fielded.

I'm sure that they aren't gonna name it "Skynet" even if they are designed to be networked and used against targets in the sky.

But then again, this is the US Army we are talking about and some one might just think that's funny and name them that anyway.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

I'm sure that they aren't gonna name it "Skynet" even if they are designed to be networked and used against targets in the sky.

But then again, this is the US Army we are talking about and some one might just think that's funny and name them that anyway.

The name is not the thing we need to be concerned about.

Consider, if there were not a human in the loop, WW III would have already happened, decades ago, actually, initiated by machine failures on both sides (not at the same time). The scenario played out in Crimson Tide has played out in real life, although I'm not aware of any that have involved a submarine.

AI is a crap shoot. Consider the anomalies you've undoubtedly seen in AI generated stuff, extra arms on people in images, stilted wordings and cadence on AI generated speech. Do we really want to give the village idiot a gun?

I'm sure the anti-drone doggie is a good idea and is benign, for now, but it is a step down a path that is on a slippery slope.

[ijuin 587]

Agreed. An AI should not be permitted to designate and engage targets without a human confirming the correctness of the targets.

[mlooney 3,548]

We already have AI driven weapon systems that don't have, really, a human in the loop.  Some "loitering" munitions (i.e. "kamikaze" drone) are sent to a target area, (which granted is selected by a human) and will attack the first thing that looks like the thing they were told looked like an enemy.  These have been used in combat, in Libya, but not, as far as I know, in Ukraine, at least not yet.  The Swedes came up with a mortar shell that is lobbed in the general direction of a group of tanks that will decide what looks like a tank and attack one.  Again, the only human agency in these is that a human sends them to the target area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_STRIX

 

[Darth Fluffy 332]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

We already have AI driven weapon systems that don't have, really, a human in the loop.  Some "loitering" munitions (i.e. "kamikaze" drone) are sent to a target area, (which granted is selected by a human) and will attack the first thing that looks like the thing they were told looked like an enemy.  These have been used in combat, in Libya, but not, as far as I know, in Ukraine, at least not yet.  The Swedes came up with a mortar shell that is lobbed in the general direction of a group of tanks that will decide what looks like a tank and attack one.  Again, the only human agency in these is that a human sends them to the target area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_STRIX

I will repeat my last stance; "It's a good idea, I'm sure it is benign, for now, but is is situated on a slippery slope. Eventual fratricide when your tanks overrun their current zone for instance is a thing that is going to happen. Or your scout vehicle. Or a family fleeing the conflict. Even human beans have this issue, how much more so a clueless idiot savant that 'knows where to blow up' but can't discern the subtleties and edge cases?

Are they necessary? Uhm, probably, especially if you are the Ukraine, for instance, up against Goliath. Is it safe? In the short run, it's safe enough. It will probably save net lives, at least 'good guy' lives, even if it occasionally screws up. But consider the narrowly avoided WW III scenario. It isn't hypothetical. It's already happened. Multiple times. Fail Safe (or Dr. Strangelove, if you prefer) came close to being our reality. Where do we draw the line? Do we even know there is a line to draw?

I deal with software every day. It does way more than it used to. It has not gotten fundamentally any better over time, quite the opposite actually. Being spied upon and (poorly) advertised to is now a thing I have to be concerned about. AI is not good nor evil, it is a tool. Like any tool, it can be misapplied (hence, the crappy mis-targeted ads).

Even AI has fundamentally changed over the years. In the 1980s, 'Expert Systems' were the bees knees. They were rule based, readable, could be analyzed, required significant manpower to create, and had fairly good results. The modern trend is trained neural networks, which are much more quickly and easily created, have been demonstrated to have training biases (which can be exploited to defeat them; make your tanks not look like an tank to the munition's AI), and defy analysis.

AI isn't going away any time soon, but I'll refrain from waving a flag for it and throwing a party.

Edited 1 hour ago by Darth Fluffy
fixed brain fart

[The Old Hack 2,482]

13 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

make your tanks not look like an AI to the munition

Um okay. So how does the loitering munition decide whether or not a tank looks like an AI?